To do

For me to learn:

UV mapping

Projection paint

Animation keyframes / autokey

Import background picture

Join objects / split objects

Lights demo

Game demo (lights)?

Car

How to move pre 2.5 stuff into 2.5 environment : cut and paste?

Try Shapeways and refine optimization

Push text

Apply bvh

Make own bvh

Model own face

String together animations

Walk cycle

Copy and paste keyframes eg to climb stairs

Make 3d viewable stills and animations

Setup:

Turntable

View name

Rotate about selected object

Left-click select, right-click rotate

View Properties> 3D display > Z axis?

File Save default settings relative paths default

Render in new window

Animation render in AVI jepg

Reset to factory settings?

Turntable

50 undo steps

· Front View?

· in System & Open GL, change OpenGL main light from CCCCCC to FFFFFFFF

· Add two other global lamps

· Set up 3 point lighting

· Move lamps and camera to layer 10?

· emulate NumPad?

· CTRL+g to save default settings (having made no other changes)

Elementary, but is this covered?:

Object vs Edit modes Tab

Right click to select object

B to select vertices within rectangle

A to deselect all/select all

Move view with Shift and press mouse wheel

Press mouse wheel to orbit

Numpad for standard views 1= front, 7 = top, 3= right (explain right)

Roll wheel to zoom

Mesh

Vertex = corner point

Vertex select/edge select/face select

Occlude Background geometry

Is there intelligent selection like in Sketchup?

Subsurf/Subdivide

Materials

Extrude

G to move

S to scale

R to rotate

Z switch between wireframe and solid

G with mouse wheel click to move parallel to an axis

Esc to escape

Ctrl-Z and Shift -Ctrl Z (does Ctrl Y work normally?)

How to save/open (breadcrumb notation = non standard

Space bar for main menu

Golden rule = one hand on keyboard, one hand on mouse

3 windows – headers

Can use Mr. bones standard?

Layers

Animation

To do:

Subsurf

BVH files

Textures

Sculpt mode

Avataritag.com

Mirror

Paint 3D object

Blender

· Make model (including background image)

· Apply materials and textures (including projecting)

· Make armature

· Attach model to armature

· Animation

· Rendering

· Game Engine

Warnings and advice

· ‘Golden rule’ : keep one hand on the keyboard and one hand on the mouse

· Nothing happened? Mouse must be over correct window (Ctrl+Up Arrow to avoid this problem)

· Can’t deselect by trying to select nothing but can use A to deselect all or

· Can’t have two models open in one instance of Blender but can have two instances of Blender running simultaneously

· Save frequently, with different name each time (mention auto-saved file)

· File save dialog ..

· Do NOT experiment with other buttons

· Extrude does 2 steps: makes coincident points then moves them. Even if you ESCape after pressing E, you will still have created coincident vertices. So do Ctrl-Z after escaping from and extrude operation if you really want to undo it. E+ESC can be useful if you want to crate coincident vertices that can then be moved etc.

· Do not close text console window

· Ctrl+W= Ctrl+S = save over – won’t actually save until and unless you confirm the overwrite)

· Any time you add an object to a scene, you should consider clearing it's rotation with Alt-R while in object mode.

· If click close box (X) then Blender will close without prompting to save unsaved work!

Questions

For a connected child bone is G the same as R? (At-G is not same as Alt-R)

How to move camera forward/back

Glossary

· Mesh

· Vertex (‘vert’)

· Subsurface (subsurf)

· Multires

· Forward kinematics (FK)

· Inverse kinematics (IK)

· Render

· Keyframe

· Orthogonal / Perspective

· Pack

· Weight paint

· Armature/rig (skeleton)

· Parent

· Group

· Chain = set of linked bones (can select whole chain with ‘L’)

· UV

· Sensor / Actuator

· Occlude (background geometry) = hide so cannot select (except with Select All) With occlude off select faces by clicking near their centre dot

· Tracking

· X-ray

Techniques

The windows/panels resizing, Splitting, joining, changing type, header

Change view – Numpad. Perspective vs. Orthogonal

Grab/Move, Rotate, Scale, Delete, Duplicate, Extrude

Remember can also use coloured arrows for constrained grab and move.

How do you extrude not normal? = MMB

Break edge in two, Break face in two, Join vertices to make edge, Fill face,

Layers (move light and camera)

To do UV mapping

Edit mode, select all, press U, chose UV with smart projection; new image (choose size* and colour), pack as PNG, choose pencil, view>paint tool, change colours (and press Enter?)

* Make image square and power of 2 e.g. 512

In 3D window choose Texture Paint and Solid

In 3D window, Zoom level affects brush size, so best to avoid zooming?

If not looking ‘straight at’ face, sometimes cannot colour near edge. Turn off Texture Paint>Texture >normal to avoid this problem with blocky objects, keep on for smoothly-curved object like sphere?

In Edit or Object mode>Shading (not editing) > Material panel turn TexFace on otherwise textures will not render

To make armature

Notes: Armatures have an object mode and an edit mode, just like the Mesh Object(link), and you can toggle these with Tab, just like a mesh object. The state that you see your armature in while in edit mode is known as the Rest Position. Armatures are meant to be animated, so to fulfil this purpose, they have yet another mode: Pose Mode. You can toggle pose mode by pressing Ctrl-Tab. Pose mode is different from edit mode in that you can change the selection to other objects outside the armature without first leaving pose mode. If you do change selection, when you return to select the armature, you will still be in pose mode. Bone selection is preserved when changing between edit and pose mode. You are placed into edit mode when a new armature is added to a scene, just like mesh, curve, and surface objects.

In edit mode, the tip or the body+root can be selected separately and each has its own set of axes. “Bones are manipulated as pairs of points while in edit mode.” It's good practice not to perform transformations on armatures. For armatures to deform a mesh object properly, the location, orientation, and size of the mesh--relative to the armature--must stay constant. The only way ensure this is to constrain the mesh object's location, rotation, and size to the armature object. To make the mesh deformed by the armature, we have to either make it a child of the armature, or use a modifier. Modifiers have more helpful features, so it is the preferred method.

When extruding make sure only the tip is selected, not the whole bone, otherwise there will be an extrusion from both ends of the bone. Sometimes if the first symmetric bone pair is based on a left bone then the right bone rolls three times as much as the left, messing up the posing later.

With pose record on, really does only record MOVED bones.

Sometimes E is sufficient (not Shift E ) to make a symmetric pair of bones.

Armature is always created pointing up (Z), no matter what view you are in.

Does ‘copy current pose’ only copy bones that are selected in pose mode?

When you paste a copied pose, all bones are considered to have moved even if they did not so all are recorded as keys if auto-key is on.

It’s helpful to have an action window open to see which bones have been keyed in which frames. (Solid yellow bars between keys mean there was no movement)

To skin (connect armature to mesh)

To do animation

When select armature and body, last clicked is active (affects menu choices etc) and is pink as opposed to magenta. Object can be active without being selected (Pink dot in centre)?

When doing animation, you will work with Edit and Pose – Object was only needed to make the first bone or to move the whole armature.

To Weight paint

In Pose Mode, select a bone. Add Body to Selection (RMB-click). Weight Paint.

To be able to go into Pose Mode a bone must be ACTIVE (last clicked). Pose Mode is not like other modes – it is an ‘overlay’ – selections made in Pose Mode are not lost when you switch to another mode. In weight paint mode you can select different bones with LMB-click without leaving that mode.

To Mirror

To mirror as you make an armature, turn on Armature Panel>X-axis mirror then use Shift-E to add bones to existing bones. Or could make one armature then duplicate it, scale it in X direction with scale factor -1, then flip names, but this would give two separate armatures, each a mirror-image of the other.

Game (e.g. Superboy’s Cubie fall)

Logic button>Change static to dynamic, turn on bounds (leaving bounding box on). Hit P to play.
Add 5 sensors, 5 controllers, 5 actuators. Change sensor ‘always’ to keyboard. Connect connectors. Up, down move 0.1 forwards or back, left and right rotate 0.1 division (1 division = 50°?) Keypress repeats almost instantly. If you don’t want it to repeat then turn on Tap. ‘Delay’ seems to make no difference.
He said ‘dynamic’ (does not bounce) but did ‘rigid body’ (does bounce). If turns over when bounces then space bar moves it sideways i.e. axes are local.

Questions

How to turn snapping on until turn off

Difference between multires and subsurf?

Multires can always be turned back to level 1

Some operations can’t be done unless Multires levels = 1

Why does one surface sometimes seem special or selected? ACTIVE. Active layer is where new additions go

Difference between texture and material? Material has uniform colour and is smooth unless acted on by a texture. Can have texture without material? Can have material without texture? YES

Do the different parts of an object have to have the same material, same texture?

How to use photo as a base for modelling à la Google? View>Background image>Use Background Image>Load

Can you project photos onto surfaces as in Sketchup? Yes, as textures. Can you project onto a curved surface??

Is W>Subdivide same as Editing>Mesh tools>Subdivide?

Mirror mode is best but how would you join a mesh that has been duplicated and flipped? Select both meshes and press Ctrl-J.

Scale seems to work according to local axes, not global, no matter what settings are used.

Gingerbread man

1. Enter wireframe mode?

2. Move (M) light and camera to level 10

3. In Edit mode, select all vertices then Editing>Mesh tools>Subdivide

4. With ‘Occlude Background Geometry’ turned off, box-select left vertices, and erase them

5. Editing > Modifiers > Add Modifier > Mirror

6. Editing>Modifiers > Apply Modifier to Editing Cage (Empty circle)

7. Choose to mirror on X axis if not already selected

8. Set the Merge Limits to 0.1. Any vertex closer to the mirror plane, than the limit we set, will be placed exactly on the mirror plane.

9. Turn on Do Clipping so that our mirror becomes a frontier that no vertex can cross.

10. Extrude (region) arm in two steps, first 1.5 squares then 0.5 squares (hold down Ctrl to constrain)

11. Uncheck ‘Do Clipping’ before next step otherwise Gus will get skirt instead of legs

12. Extrude 3 times to make leg (1.5 squares, 1, 0.5) – click MMB to remove extrude constraint

13. Turn ‘Do Clipping’ back on?

14. Switch to Edit mode and apply modifier

15. In Edit mode, place cursor exactly one square above body, on mirror plane (Shift-S to snap cursor to grid)

16. Add a new cube (SPACE>ADD>Cube)

17. Grab (G) the selected vertices and move them down about one third of a square (click MMB to constrain to closest axis)

18. In Object mode (or Edit mode) select the body (or select all vertices in Edit Mode) then Add Subsurf Modifier and set levels and render levels to 2. The subsurfacing does not create ‘real’ faces and vertices – switching to Edit Mode reveals the original pre-subsurf vertices.

19. Switch from Wireframe mode to Solid mode (Z) and examine Gus

20. Editing> Links and Materials > Set Smooth

21. (If centre line is not right switch to Editing mode then select all vertices then Ctrl+N to reset normals. LMB click on ‘Recalculate normals outside’.

22. Edit Mode, wireframe (Z) side view, select all vertices, scale (S) + Y or MMB. Hold down Ctrl to constrain values to multiples of 0.1 and scale to 0.2

23. Solid view - inspection with MMB

24. Select (make visible) layers 1 and 10

25. Press N to bring up the Transform Properties window (The Panel for numerical input of object position/rotation etc). The location of the camera is specified by LocX, LocY, and LocZ

26. Select camera and set position to 7,-10,7 either using G or Shift-LMB on number field and type values. Press Enter to confirm input.

27. To make the camera point at Gus, keep your camera selected then select Gus via Shift RMB . The camera should be magenta and Gus light pink. Now press Ctrl T and select the TrackTo Constraint entry in the pop up.

28. Now we need to create the ground for Gus to stand on. It is important to be out of Edit Mode, otherwise the newly added object would be part of the object currently in Edit Mode, as when we added Gus' head.

29. In Object Mode and in top view (NumPad 7 or View>>Top), and, add a plane (SPACE>>Add>>Mesh>>Plane).

30. Switch to the Front view and move (G) the plane down to Gus's feet, using CTRL to keep it aligned with Gus.

31. Go to Camera view and, with the plane still selected, press S to start scaling. Enlarge the plane so that its edges extend beyond the camera viewing area, as indicated by the outer white dashed rectangle in Camera view.

32. Move the lamp to -9,-10,7.

33. Shading >Lamp buttons >Preview>Spot. Set colour to pale yellow (R=1, G=1, B=0.9). Adjust Samples: to 4 and SpotBl: to 1.0.

34. Make spotlight track Gus

35. Add a second lamp that provides more uniform fill light via (SPACE>>Add>>Lamp>>Hemi). Set its Energy to 0.5. Move it a little above the camera (x= 7, y= -10, z=9) and set it to track Gus as before.

36. Press F12 or choose Scene>Render>Render>Render

37. Save work (Ctrl-W)

========================= COULD SKIP NEXT SECTION ======================

38. Select Gus, then Shading>Material>Links & Pipeline > Link to Object pull-down Menu>Add New (is this necessary?)

39. Name the material Gingerbread

40. Colour = 0.874, 0.717, 0.504, Shaders > Spec = 0.05, hard=5, Bias = on

41. Texture panel> Add new (is this necessary?) and rename as ‘GingerTex’

42. Textures mode> Texture panel > Texture type > Stucci

43. Stucci panel > Wall out = on, Noise Size = 0.02

44. ‘Materials > Map to’: Release the Col Toggle Button and set the Nor Toggle Button, then raise the Nor slider to 0.75. These changes will make our Stucci texture act as a "bumpmap" and make Gus look more biscuit-like.

45. Select texture channel 2, then add a second texture, name it "Grain", and set the texture type to ‘Noise’.

46. In Shading > Material Buttons, turn off Col, turn on Ref ONLY and set the Var property to 0.4.

47. Select the ground, then Shading > Materials > Texture > Add New.

48. Shading > Materials > Links and Pipeline: Change the name of the new material to Ground

49. Shading > Materials > Material: Set the colour to blue: 0.46, 0.46, 1.0.

50. IN OBJECT VIEW (so that the new sphere is created as a separate object), place the cursor in the centre of Gus’s head (check at least 2 views to make sure it is really where you think it is). Don’t forget Shift+S to snap the cursor to the grid.

51. SPACE>ADD>Mesh>UVsphere). Use a value of 16 for both Segments (meridians) and Rings (parallels).

52. Scale the sphere down (S) to a factor of about 0.15 in all dimensions, then switch to side view and scale it only in the horizontal direction (Y) a further 0.5.

53. Still in side view, zoom in then drag (G) the sphere to the left until it is half way out of the head.

54. In front view, drag (G) the sphere until it is in the correct position for an eye (see image below).

55. In the 3D window header, change the Pivot type to 3D cursor.

56. With just the eye selected, change to Edit Mode. The eye should still be selected (if not, press A to select all), now press Shift D to duplicate and ESC to stop placing it with the mouse. Then press M to mirror, X to mirror around the X axis, followed by LMB or ENTER to confirm the mirror. (Mirroring can also be done in object mode using CTRL+M, but better to switch to edit mode so that both eyes are the same object with same material).

57. Change the Pivot type back to Median Point

58. Leave Edit mode so that the mouth will be created as a separate object. Make sure the 3D cursor is still in the centre of Gus’s face. Make a new sphere as for the eyes but with overall scale = 0.1.

59. Place the new sphere as shown in the centre image below:

60. Switch to Edit Mode (TAB). In Edit Buttons > Mesh Tools Panel set Degr to 90, Steps to 3, and verify that the Clockwise TogButton is on. Then, with all vertices still selected, press SpinDup. This will create three duplicates of the selected vertices on an arc of 90 degrees, centred around the cursor. The result should be Gus's mouth, like the last image of the sequence shown.

61. Now go back to Object Mode and add three more spheres (below the head and centred along the Z-axis) to form Gus's buttons. Once you have made one button, you can simply exit Edit Mode, press Shift+D to create a duplicate, and move the duplicate into place, as shown in The complete Gus. Making these 3 buttons in Object mode means they will be 3 separate objects which can each be given a different colour (different material).

62. If we want to be able to grab Gus and move him around as a whole, we now need to attach the small spheres representing eyes, mouth, and buttons to the body. Enter Object Mode and press A until nothing is selected. Now right click one sphere (if more than one is selected as a group, that's ok). Holding SHIFT, select the body. Then hit CTRL+P and left-click Make parent on the pop up. Deselect everything and repeat the process to attach each element.

63. Give the eyes a chocolate-like material, like the one shown at the top in the image below. Give the mouth a white sugar like material, like the second one shown in the image and give the buttons a red, white, and green sugar-like material. These are shown from top to bottom (green and red not shown in image).
Material panel: name= Chocolate, colour = 0.3, 0.18, 0.0
Shaders panel: Oren-Nayar, Ref=0.5, Binn, Spec= 1.5, Hard=224, Refr=3.46

Material panel: name=WhiteSugar
Shaders Panel: Ref=0.9, Spec=0.9, Hard=255
Texture Panel: choose Grain from the pull-down list of textures and turn off Col, Turn on Nor

RedSugar and GreenSugar are same as WhiteSugar except for the colours: 1,0,0 and 0,1,0

64. Objects sharing a material. To give one object the same material as another object, select that material in the Material Menu list which appears when you press the Menu Button in the Materials panel:

65. Rendering. Once you have finished assigning materials, make layer 10 visible again so that lights and the camera also appear, and do a new rendering (F12). The result should look more or less like this:

66. Saving. Save your image by pressing F3. Enter the name of your image in the file window and save. You must choose the image format (JPEG, PNG, and so on) by setting it in the Rendering buttons before pressing F3 and using the Menu in the Format Panel. Blender does not add an extension to the file name; you must enter one if you wish.

========================= PART 2 Adding the rigging / skeleton / armature ======================

67. WARNING: I created the plane, spheres and armature in layer 10 which was visible and active. Is this a problem? Is there something missing in the instructions?

68. In Wireframe view (Z) set your 3D cursor where Gus's shoulder is (don’t forget to check the position in at least two views), and press SPACE>Add>Armature. A bone will appear.

69. Enter Edit mode. Place the other end of the armature in Gus's hand by grabbing (G) and moving the end.

70. Still in Edit mode, move the cursor to where the hip joint will be and add a new bone.

71. Grab and move the yellow end of the new bone to the knee area.

72. Now "chain" a new bone from the knee to the foot by Ctrl+LMB in the area of the foot. Another way of "chaining" the new bone would be to extrude using the (E). This variation creates the new bone and places you in grab mode automatically. Use the LMB to then place the bone.

73. Now place the cursor in the centre and select all bones with A. Duplicate them with Shift+D and exit grab mode with ESC. Make sure the 3D cursor is selected as the rotation/scaling pivot. Flip the bones along the X axis relative to the cursor with CTRL+M and then X (press Enter to confirm). You end up with the complete armature of 6 bones as shown in this image:

74. Bones can roll around their length. Although this can be useful when animating, it can ruin an otherwise good armature if improper roll values are included in the original structure in Edit mode. Once you have built an armature, it is essential that you select all the bones in Edit mode and use Ctrl-N>Clear Roll (Z-axis up) to remove any bone roll, making sure that you begin animating from a "clean slate."

75. Click the Editing Button (or press F9) and select all the bones (A). The Edit Buttons window should show an Armature Panel and Armature Bones Panel which contains the Armature controls. Press Armature Panel>Draw Names to see the names of the bones in 3D View. BUT LOWER RIGHT LEG BONE DOES NOT APPEAR! Links & Materials>Vertex Groups is empty unless Body is active (as opposed to selected.) Does not show Remove, Assign, Select etc unless in Edit Mode. What is connection between vertex groups and weight painting? In Weight paint mode, weight paint window shows the vertex group chosen from the panel – does NOT show selected vertices and does NOT show selected bone. Thus in weight paint mode can use the vertex group list to switch from one ‘bone’ to another. Thus can switch (tab) between Weight Paint and Edit modes while choosing different vertex groups. Mistake was that weight was set to 0.0 when vertex group was created. Changing weight later does not affect weight of vertices already in the group. Cannot change weight of vertices already in the group. Cannot change weight of individual vertices within group ‘except by weight painting. Solution to problem: Remove all vertices from group, then add them back (assign) with weight set to 1.0 (simply select>remove>assign). If you are working with a symmetrical mesh and armature, and the bones are named properly as described before, you can enable the X-Mirror option (Weight Paint mode>Paint Panel>X-mirror). X-Mirror allows you to weight paint only one side of a character, and have your painting mirrored to the other, saving you the trouble of duplicating your work on symmetrical characters. Clearing weights with the Clear button does not work symmetrically, regardless of the set up.

76. LMB-click on the names in the Armature Bones panel and change them (case-sensitive!) to Arm.R, Arm.L, UpLeg.R, LoLeg.R, UpLeg.L and LoLeg.L. It is very important to name your bones with a trailing '.L' or '.R' to distinguish between left and right ones, so that the Action editor will be able to automatically flip your poses. As a workaround for the non-appearance of the Lower Right leg bone in the previous step, select that bone alone and rename it LoLeg.R.

77. Exit EditMode with (TAB).

78. Skinning. Now we must make it such that a deformation in the armature causes a matching deformation in the body. We do this with Skinning, which assigns vertices to bones so that the former are subject to the latter's movements.

79. In Object Mode, first select Gus's body, then SHIFT-select the armature so that the body is magenta and the armature is light pink. The last-clicked object is always the active object, and appears in light pink.

80. Press Ctrl+P to parent the body to the armature. The Parenting menu will appear. Select the Armature entry. A new menu appears, asking if you want Blender to do nothing, create empty vertex groups (Name Groups), or create and populate vertex groups (Create From Bone Heat). The last option is considered automatic skinning. We'll use the automatic skinning option. Go ahead and select Create From Bone Heat.

81. Now select just Gus's body and switch to Edit Mode (TAB). Notice in the Edit Buttons Window (F9) the presence of the "Vertex Groups" menu and buttons in the Link and Materials Panel. By pressing the Menu Button, a menu, with all available vertex groups, pops up - six in our case. But a truly complex character, with hands and feet completely rigged, can have tens of them! The buttons Select and Deselect show you which vertices belong to which group. Make sure all vertices are de-selected (press A, if needed) then use the menu button to select the Right arm group (Arm.R) and press Select. You should see something similar to the image below. If you don't see the same thing then you probably placed the bones in just the right place such that the auto skinning process did a better job of matching vertices with bones. However it is highly unlikely that the skinning process matched the vertices to the bones as exactly as you may expect. Therefore you will usually need to manually adjust the grouping as described in the following sections.

82. The vertices marked with yellow circles in the image belong to the deformation group, but they should not do so. The auto-skinning process found that they were very close to the bone so it added them to the deformation group. We don't want them in this group since some are in the head and some are in the chest, adding them to the deformation group would deform those body parts as well. To remove them from the group, deselect all the other vertices, those which should remain in the group using Box selection (B), but use MMB , not LMB , to define the box, so that all vertices within the box become deselected. Once the 'undesired' vertices are selected, press the Remove button to eliminate them from group (Arm.R). Deselect all (A) then check another group. Check them all and be sure that they look like those in the three vertex groups below (or their mirror images).
Be very careful when assigning or removing vertices from vertex groups. If later on you see unexpected deformations, you might have forgotten some vertices, or placed too many in the group. You can modify your vertex groups at any time. Choosing what you want to remove is counter-intuitive – is there a better way?
Our deformations will affect only Gus's body, not his eyes, mouth, or buttons, which are separate objects. Are they separate even though they are children of Gus’s body? While this is not an issue to consider in this simple animation, it's one that must be taken into account for more complex projects, for example by parenting or otherwise joining the various parts to the body to make a single mesh.

83. Posing.

84. (This is a repeat) Bones can roll around their length. Although this can be useful when animating, it can ruin an otherwise good armature if improper roll values are included in the original structure in Edit mode. Once you have built an armature, it is essential that you select all the bones and use the Ctrl-N>Clear Roll (Z-axis up) hotkey to trigger a full recalculation of bone roll, making sure that you begin animating from a "clean slate." Never begin working in Pose mode before selecting all bones in Edit mode and fixing roll rotation with the Ctrl-N hotkey.

85. Once you have a rigged and skinned Gus you can start playing with him as if he were a doll, moving his bones and viewing the results. Select the armature only, then select Pose Mode from the "Mode" Menu. This option only appears if an armature is selected. (Strictly speaking armature must be active, not necessarily selected.) The armature will turn blue. You are now in Pose Mode. If you now select a bone it will turn cyan, not pink, and if you move it (G), or rotate it (R), the body will deform! Blender remembers the original position of the bones. You can set your armature back by pressing Alt+R to clear the rotation and Alt+G to clear the location. Alternatively, Armature Panel> Rest Position button may be used to temporarily show the original position.

86. Inverse Kinematics (IK) is where you actually define the position of the last bone in the chain, often called an "End Effector". All the other bones assume an algorithmic position, automatically computed by the IK solver, to keep the chain without gaps (i.e. IK will mathematically solve the chain positions for us). This allows a much easier and precise positioning of hands and feet using IK.

87. Forward Kinematics (FK). While handling bones in Pose Mode notice that they act as rigid, inextensible bodies with spherical joints at the end. You can grab only the first bone of a chain and all the others will follow it. All subsequent bones in the chain cannot be grabbed and moved, you can only rotate them, so that the selected bone rotates with respect to the previous bone in the chain while all the subsequent bones of the chain follow its rotation. This procedure, Forward Kinematics, is easy to follow but it makes precise location of the last bone in the chain difficult.

88. We'll make Gus walk, using FK, by defining four different poses relative to four different stages of a stride. Blender will do the work of creating a fluid animation. First, verify that you are at frame 1 of the timeline. The frame number appears in a NumButton on the right of the Buttons Window Toolbar. If it is not set to 1, set it to 1 now.

89. Now, by rotating only one bone at a time (R), we'll raise UpLeg.L and bend LoLeg.L backwards while raising Arm.R a little and lowering Arm.L a little, as shown in this image:

90. Rotation/Scaling pivot should be set to Median Point (earlier). To store the pose to the frame, select all bones with A (wouldn’t it be better to select only bones that have been posed?) and then, with the mouse pointer on the 3D Window, press I. Select LocRot from the menu that pops up. This will store the position and orientation of all bones as a pose at frame 1. This pose represents Gus in the middle of his stride, while moving his left leg forward and above the ground. Never forget to press I or the pose will be lost! Solution: Open a timeline window and enable the button with the red dot, commonly seen in audio/video devices as the Record button. You have just enabled automatic keyframing, meaning that any bone that moves or rotates will automatically have a keyframe set on the current frame. This will prevent the unfortunately common occurrence of setting a complex pose, then accidentally advancing the frame number and losing it.

91. Now move to frame 11 either by entering the number in the NumButton or by pressing UP ARROW. Then move Gus to a different position, like this:
Start with clearing the rotation on both leg bones using Alt+R as mentioned earlier (you must do this otherwise the pasted pose will ‘add to’ the current pose). Then, in top view, rotate Arm.R slightly forward and Arm.L slightly back. Finish the pose with his left leg forward and right leg backward, both slightly bent. Gus is walking in place!

92. Select all bones again and press I to store this pose at frame 11.

93. We now need a third pose at frame 21, with the right leg up, because we are in the middle of the other half of the stride. This pose is the mirror of the one we defined at frame 1. Therefore, return to frame 1 and, with all the bones selected, in the Pose Menu in the 3D Window header select Copy Current Pose.

94. Go to frame 21 and paste the pose with the Paste Flipped Pose option in the Pose Menu. This button will paste the cut pose, exchanging the positions of bones with suffix ".L" with those of bones with suffix ".R", effectively flipping it! The pose is there but it has not been stored yet! You must press I with all bones selected.

95. Now apply the same procedure to copy the pose at frame 11 to frame 31, also flipping it. When I did this the arm bones got the wrong rotation is it because the poses are recorded relative to the view I am in? Or because the bones were twisted/rolled? I think it is because the rest position includes bones that were twisted/rolled. Should I have cleared rotation before doing pose for frame 1? For Copy Current Pose must all bones be selected?

96. To complete the cycle, we need to copy the pose at frame 1 without flipping to frame 41. Do so by copying it as usual, and by using the Paste Pose entry. End the sequence by pressing I to store the pose.

97. To preview your Animation, set the current frame to 1 and press ALT-A in the 3D window. The single step in-place is the core of a walk, and once you have defined one there are techniques to make a character walk along a complex path. But, for the purpose of our Quick Start, this single step in-place is enough.

98. Change to the Rendering Buttons (F10) and in the Anim panel, below the PLAY button, set the start frame (Sta:) to 1 (it is usually set to 1 by default so you probably won't need to change it) and set the end frame (End:) to 40 (it is set to 250 by default). Because frame 41 is identical to frame 1, we only need to render frames from 1 to 40 to produce the full cycle.

99. Setting the Rendering Buttons for an animation. Select AVI Raw as the file type in Format Panel (Setting the Rendering Buttons for an animation.). While this is generally not the best choice, mainly for file size issues (as will be explained later on), it is fast and it will run on any machine, so it suits our needs. (You can also select AVI Jpeg to produce a more compact file (does not work for me but Cinepak does). AVI JPEG uses lossy JPEG compression and will produce a movie that some external players might not be able to play).

100. Finally, press the ANIM button in Anim Panel. Remember that all the layers that you want to use in the animation must be shown! In our case, these are layers 1 and 10. If you make a mistake, like forgetting to turn layer 10 on, you can stop the rendering process with the ESC key.

101. Our scene is pretty simple, and Blender will probably render each of the 40 images in a few seconds. Watch them as they appear. Once the rendering is complete you should have a file named 0001_0040.avi in a render subdirectory of your current directory --the one containing your .blend file. The directory can be changed from the Output tab inside the Scene panel (F10). You can play this file directly within Blender by pressing the Play button beneath the ANIM button (Setting the Rendering Buttons for an animation). The animation will automatically cycle. To stop it press ESC. We have produced only a very basic walk cycle. There is much more in Blender, as you'll soon discover!

102. Stills. Of course you can always render each of your animation frames as a still by selecting the frame you wish to render and pressing the RENDER button.

103. I lost the gingerbread texture at some point